It Is Tradition
by Dookaller
Summary: It's Christmas time in Domino City, and the gang's all here, much to Kaiba's chagrin.


It was an unusually full house for the holidays at the Kaiba Mansion this year, much to Kaiba's dismay. Kaiba knew that there was supposed to be something nice about family get-togethers, friends, and company for Christmas, but not only was he not used to it, but these were his four least favorite people.

They all sat around the living room staring at the television while Mokuba flipped through the channels trying to find something festive, like they were all so damn jolly.

"Ah, that kid is such a loser," said Kaiba of the movie Mokuba just flipped past.

"Oh, I always liked that movie as a kid," said Yugi.

"Makes sense, you probably identify with him because you're such a─"

"_Kaiba_," warned Joey, and Kaiba was silent.

"Do you guys wanna watch the one about the puppy that kid gets for Christmas and then─" Mokuba began but Téa interrupted him.

"Oh no that one's sad."

"Oh just put in The Grinch," said Kaiba.

"Oh I bet you like that one," said Joey, "because you identify with the main character─"

"Wheeler─"

"Of course if you want to watch something where you really identify, we could watch A Christmas Carol─"

"Joey, that's enough," said Yugi.

"We could watch the Christmas Carol with the puppets," suggested Mokuba.

"Sure," said Tristan.

"Yeah, sounds like a plan!" said Téa, at which point Kaiba promptly headed out of the room.

But before he could reach the kitchen, Yugi asked, "Where you goin' Kaiba?"

Kaiba turned around swiftly like he might snap at Yugi, but he stopped himself. Regaining his composure, he said, "I thought I might go make everyone some hot chocolate."

"Oh, that's sweet," Yugi replied. Joey almost laughed.

Kaiba disappeared into the kitchen. He tried to look on the bright side. Mokuba was having a good time. He never got to have big Christmases and he'd loved telling Téa all about his art class and showing her things he'd made.

Kaiba started heating up some water in a teakettle for hot chocolate, and decided to make some popcorn on the stove too. Maybe if he was really nice, they wouldn't notice how little he cared about any of this.

He had to make a few trips to give everyone a cup and then bring out popcorn. He didn't mind, it made it last longer, but when everyone had everything, he was forced to sit down. He ended up pulling out his phone to check his email after a while.

"Would it kill you to be involved?" whispered Joey.

"What is there to be involved in? What, you wanna cuddle with me?"

Joey just threw a couch pillow at him in response. Kaiba caught the pillow and slipped it behind his back without missing a beat. He leaned onto in like it was the comfort he'd been missing all night, and Joey couldn't help but smile though he kept the smile to himself.

About half way through the movie, Kaiba was looking for an out. He thought about saying he was sick and wanted to go to bed, but he had a feeling Joey would see right through that. Finally, he decided the bathroom would have to do.

"Where are you going?" asked Joey as Kaiba stood up.

"I need to use the bathroom."

"I kind of do to," said Téa.

"I kinda want to get some more hot chocolate," said Tristan.

"Okay, let's take a bathroom break," Mokuba said, pausing the television.

The lights came on and Kaiba almost groaned. This wasn't the plan. He lingered at the mouth of the hallway for a moment, thinking, as everyone got up and started stretching their legs. Téa and Joey walked toward the kitchen first, and having trouble getting around each other, Mokuba stopped them at the doorway with a smile.

When Kaiba had told Mokuba they were coming over, Mokuba had insisted more decorations than usual were necessary. Tinsel hung from every fixture, holly was pinned into the walls, and paper snowflakes dangled in the windows. But worst of Mokuba's machinations was the obvious placed, yet unsuspected mistletoe tacked slyly over the front door, guest bathroom door, and kitchen entrance.

Kaiba had thought it was stupid when Mokuba put them up, but now, as he looked at Téa and Joey's face, he smiled. Depending on who was crushing on whom right now, this could be humiliating for all 4 of them─Because in groups like that, everyone is always in love with everyone. It was one of the things Kaiba hated about people.

Joey tried to brush it off and move away, but it was Yugi who egged them on. "Come, just a little peck! It's tradition."

Joey grimaced in Yugi's direction, but before he could think much more about it, Téa kissed him, so short and uneventful, Kaiba could compare it to himself kissing Mokuba on rare occasion. They laughed and disappeared into the kitchen. Kaiba was no longer smiling.

"I might be a minute," Kaiba said looking at Mokuba as if to say _start the movie without me._

He disappeared into the hallway, and after actually using the bathroom, found a den to sit in and think. He knew he could just go upstairs and go to bed, or sit on the computer in his office; it was his house after all, but somehow, going all the way upstairs felt like he was blatantly abandoning them. At least here, if he was found he could go, "Oh I _was_ peeing, but then I passed this room and saw how lovely the lights in the garden looked and I just stopped to look for a minute."

Which is exactly what he told Yugi, when Yugi stumbled in, apologizing that he had been looking for a bathroom. It must not have been urgent though, because rather than leaving to pursue its real whereabouts immediately, Yugi came and sat down next to Kaiba on the light blue settee, and too looked out toward the garden, where Roland had nurtured poinsettias now in bloom.

"It is very lovely out there…" Yugi said.

"Mh," Kaiba replied.

"Sorry if I'm bothering you, I'm sure you came here to be alone─"

"I told you, I─"

"You've been in here for like a half an hour."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I needed a little space for a minute too."

"Ah."

"Can only sit in the same position in a room that's slightly too warm, right next to Tristan, for so long." Kaiba almost laughed, and Yugi was pleased he'd gotten a reaction out of him. When Kaiba didn't speak Yugi decided to ask a question. "Hey, Kaiba?"

"Yeah?"

"Why'd you invite us here?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are your motives in having the gang over for Christmas?"

"What are you talking about? I thought it would be fun."

"Uhuh."

"What's _uhuh_ supposed to mean?"

"You've never shown any interest in this kind of thing before. I know you have ulterior motives, and that's okay, just thought I'd ask."

"I can't tell you."

"…What?"

"I can't say why I invited you."

"Am I going to die here tonight?"

This time Kaiba did laugh. "No."

"Really? Cause that's awfully suspicious. I wouldn't be angry at whatever it is. I'm sure I've forgiven you for worse."

Suddenly Kaiba looked almost hurt. It wasn't like a direct hurt like when someone is letting it all out so the other person knows, _the thing you just said hurt my feelings_, it was more like he was mulling something over that caused him stress or guilt, and then he said, "Don't tell Wheeler."

"Joey? This has something to do with Joey?"

"He set up this whole charade. Was all his idea for the 4 of you to come over for the holiday."

"And you went along with it because…?"

"Because he's been threatening to get a restraining order against me."

"What?!" And Kaiba began explaining the conversation he and Joey had a few weeks ago.

"I'll ask you again, Wheeler: why would I ever let 4 people I hate, in my house for that extended period of time?"

"I'm not bluffing, Kaiba. I could take you to court."

"Don't make me laugh."

"You've done enough to us, and there have been enough witnesses that a restraining order would be easy. They're not like real charges, Kaiba, they're like the government's form of peer mediation. You've lured us into your house under false pretenses, put our lives in danger more than once, tried to slug me more times than I can count, and you kidnapped a guy's grandfather for gods' sake. And I know you don't want one, Kaiba. Not only would it be bad for your reputation, but deep down, you do care about us, because we are the closest thing your sorry ass will ever have to friends, and if you can't come near Yugi… You can never duel him again."

"You're serious about it this time?"

"Yes, yes I am."

"This is extortion."

"Yes, yes it is."

"Well what am I supposed to do?"

"Just have us over for Christmas, and don't be mean and don't upset Yugi. I'm sure Mokuba will love it, what have you got to lose?"

"Don't you have your own families you need to─"

"That isn't the point, Kaiba!"

"Okay, I'll call him tomorrow and ask him to come… You're right."

"I'm sorry, did you just say I was right about something?"

"Yes," Kaiba said rolling his eyes.

"What?"

"Ugh! About Mokuba, he will thoroughly enjoy having people over."

"Well good then. It'll all be perfect as long as you behave."

As Kaiba finished this story, Yugi looked like he was trying really hard not to burst out laughing.

"What?" asked Kaiba. "Are you laughing at me?─Listen all I cared about was getting the chance to defeat you. I─"

"No! I'm not laughing at you… I just think it's funny in general. Oh, Joey, what a sweet heart."

"Sweet heart? You mean jackass… Hey, Yugi?"

"Yeah?"

"Now answer me a question, don't you all have families of your own to spend Christmas with?"

"Oh, yeah I was surprised everyone agreed to come over, I thought Joey was supposed to go to his mom's house for Christmas this year. But, me, it's…"

"It's what?"

"Well, it's… my first Christmas without my grandfather. Téa wanted me to come to her house, but that made me kinda uncomfortable. I didn't like the idea of not being able to leave suddenly if I wanted to. Joey got it immediately, said family would remind me of family and we should just do friend stuff, and they'd all come over… But I spend every day in the game shop, and I told them I really didn't want to hang out there with all the memories. I realize I was being kind of difficult. But I guess this was Joey's solution."

"… When you… When you say without him, you mean…?"

"He's dead."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, I don't need your pity."

"I'm not pitying you. I'm genuinely sorry."

"Are you serious right now?"

"Yeah… But it'll be okay."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Of course you know that. But I'm saying it anyway. It's going to be okay. You're tough, and I've found that nothing really ever breaks you, never permanently anyway. Lots of other people love you, and new people will come along who will love you, but his being gone also doesn't change that he loved you. It's going to suck for a while, in fact, it may never be the same. But that's okay, the world is always changing, and that's why humans are good at adapting, and it's okay that things change. And you're sitting here, and you're alive and you can laugh, and everything is okay."

Yugi looked up at Kaiba with tears in his eyes, and said, "That wasn't the reaction I was expecting from you."

"Oh…"

"No one… no one ever said that to you, did they?"

"No… would've been nice." And then Yugi hugged him. He lunged forward slipping under Kaiba's arm and squeezed his torso like they were brothers who hadn't seen each other since the war. "Oh…" said Kaiba, "We're hugging now… I can deal with this. People can hug me sometimes, and I don't have to push them off. Me and Yugi can have a moment… Yeah─"

"Kaiba, you're rambling," Yugi said, pulling away.

"Sorry."

"It's cool, we should go back to the living room."

"Ugh… that movie is really stupid."

"Eh, I thought it was okay, but I think we should've just watched the Christmas episode of Gamer's United."

Kaiba looked at him in shock. "That is my favorite show."

"Really? Mine too."

"I never would've thought we'd have anything in common."

"What? We have tons in common. If you and me were completely different and on totally different paths, a rivalry never would've worked out."

"Huh, true."

They idled back to the living room together, Kaiba sitting back down in his recliner. Yugi's seat next to Tristan had been taken by Joey, who was quietly showing him a text message he had just gotten, so Yugi took Joey's former seat on the couch that was closest to Kaiba.

"Hey," Yugi whispered, "speaking of holiday episodes, did you see the one where they met the guy who invented dreidels?"

"And then it turned out they were actually magical devices? Yeah, love that episode."

"You know, this show doesn't seem like it'd really be your style… I mean it has a lot of magic and─"

"It's fiction."

"Riiiighht."

After the movie, Téa thought they would go to bed. After all it was Christmas Eve, and Mokuba was probably going to want to get up early in the morning. But Mokuba insisted it was still early, and they should bake cookies for Santa Claus.

"You still believe in Santa Claus?" asked Téa.

"No, but we can still eat his cookies."

Everyone agreed and Tristan got up to go into the kitchen with Mokuba. They got in each other's way and Téa started laughing.

"What?" asked Tristan. She pointed to the mistletoe and Mokuba looked horrified.

"No," Mokuba said immediately.

"Oh, but, Mokuba," said Joey, "It _is_ tradition."

"Yeah," Téa said, "Wouldn't want to break the rules."

"Mhm, it's a tradition," said Tristan coming too close to Mokuba for comfort.

Mokuba looked so horrified, Kaiba thought he might wet his pants. Kaiba said nothing. Tristan leaned in and grabbed Mokuba, kissing him on his forehead and cheeks, tickling him and forcing him down to the floor in the process.

"This is the worst day of my life!" Mokuba yelled, but he was laughing. "No! Please! Make it stop!"

"It's tradition, Mokuba, it's tradition!" yelled Tristan, tickling him and laughing himself.

"Seto! Help, he's molesting me!" and then it all stopped, because they'd almost forgotten about Kaiba and everyone looked over to him to see his reaction. After a moment of silence, Kaiba began laughing.

"Here," said Tristan reaching out a hand and pulling Mokuba back to his feet.

"You're a master of time and space, man. You're a wizard."

"Huh?"

"You made my brother laugh." And abruptly, Kaiba stopped laughing.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked getting up. They all started migrating to the kitchen.

"Oh, nothing, Seto."

"Kaiba laughs plenty," Yugi mock defended.

"Well yeah," Mokuba replied, "He laughs maniacally all the time."

"Hey! I haven't done that in a long time," said Kaiba.

"You did it last week when you found out Doc Games was going out of business."

"Hey, that's a perfectly necessary time to laugh evilly. A piece of competition is dead!" Yugi proceeded to laugh like he was Frankenstein and had just succeeded in making life. "I mean of course, you'd think by now it would be normal to Kaiba, and he'd just be like, BAM! And another one bites the dust!"

Joey laughed and when on, "And another one down, and another one down, and another one bites the dust!"

Tristan started drumming on the counter as Téa said, "Hey, I'm gonna get you too, another one bites the dust!"

Suddenly Mokuba started to sing loudly and almost perfectly, "How do you think I'm going to get along, without you when you're gone?! You took me for everything that I had and kicked me out on my own!"

"I didn't even know you knew this song," said Kaiba.

"Come on, Kaiba!" Yugi said. "Another one bites the dust!"

And they all started to dance to no music, as badly as they could, cramped in the kitchen, Kaiba actually singing along, "There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man and bring him to the ground…"

They were vaguely aware that they hadn't sang all the lyrics correctly and may have gone out of order, but it didn't matter. As they settled down, Mokuba pulled out cookie dough he'd made earlier in the day and started rolling it into balls.

"Man, now Another One Bites The Dust is gonna be stuck in my head for like ever," said Joey.

"I can get it out," said Yugi.

"Can you?"

Yugi pulled off his jacket and tied it around his hips. "Oh gods, Yugi," said Téa.

"Santa baby," Yugi sang in the highest pitch his voice would go. "Slip a Sable under the tree for me! I've been an awfully good girl!"

"Oh, Yugi, stop," said Joey.

"It is the stickiest Christmas song. Whatever you've got, it'll get it out."

"That doesn't mean you have to─"

"Santa baby, a '54 convertible too, light blue," Yugi sang swinging his hips. "I'll wait up for you, dear, Santa baby. So hurry down the chimney tonight."

"This is embarrassing," said Kaiba.

"It reminds me of 3rd grade," laughed Téa, helping Mokuba put the dough on the cookie sheet.

"Oh my god, that _was_ embarrassing!" said Yugi.

"You weren't embarrassed," Téa replied.

"Yeah, well not until after we'd done it. You tricked."

"I did not trick you. You agreed to sing it with me... in front of a couple... dozen other children..."

"You guys have been friends since grammar school?" Kaiba asked.

"Well we've known each other since grammar school," replied Yugi, remembering other awkward times. "But I wouldn't say we've been friends that whole time."

"Oh, Yugi, we were little kids," said Téa.

"I had _no_ friends."

"Ugh, Yugi, you freaked me out."

"I didn't know how you were going to react, I didn't know what I was saying─"

"Well, I didn't know how to react! Get this guys, in 5th grade, Yugi decides to tell me he's totally _in-love_ with me─"

"I was 10!"

"Yeah, well so was I."

"Well, yeah, so then she didn't talk to me for 5 years."

"That is not true, I still talked to you, we just didn't hang out as much, and I stopped going to your house, because I felt uncomfortable… and cause I thought your grandpa smelled funny. I grew out of it."

"No you didn't, he totally smelled funny. Finally when I was like 13 I told him, _you've got to stop wearing that cologne, it is the worst thing ever_, and he was like, _I don't even smell it_, but he stopped wearing it."

The kitchen burst with laughter. They were having a surprisingly good time for being at Kaiba's house. After a while, they all split into groups in the living room with plates of cookies, Tristan and Joey talking about some girl they met at Burger World that kept texting them, Téa playing checkers with Mokuba, and Yugi and Kaiba talking about Duel Monsters.

"It's not that I don't like the newer cards, it's that I'm afraid it's all headed in a direction I won't be able to keep up with, which makes me feel old."

"King's gotta step down some time, but I wouldn't worry about it, no chump is gonna come along with a deck full of new cards and find a way to defeat you."

"I guess I'm just hoping _your _company doesn't go along with this fad."

"Gotta adapt to the market."

"You're going to make it worse, aren't you?"

"Well what if no one had adapted to the market? What if tournaments were still played on tabletop?"

"I realize that sounds boring to us now, but we'd have never known."

"We would've because… of… uh…"

"Because what?"

"Mmf…"

"Seto Kaiba, were you about to say something about magic?"

"No."

"Yes you were."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Hey Yug?" asked Joey suddenly. "You think maybe it's getting' time to hit the hay?"

"I hate to say it, but I'm actually tired," said Mokuba.

"I've been ready to go to bed for a while," said Téa.

"Mokuba, would you mind showing everyone to their rooms?" Kaiba asked.

"Are you not going to bed, Seto?"

"Uh, we might stay up a few more minutes," Yugi answered for him.

"Yeah, maybe have one more cup of hot chocolate," Kaiba agreed.

"Alright, whatever flies your dragon," Mokuba said leading the others up stairs.

"You really wanna make more cocoa?" asked Yugi once they were gone.

"Sure," Kaiba said standing up and heading for the kitchen. "Maybe afterward you could help me get some stuff out of the closet?"

"Uh, okay…"

"I never put everything for Mokuba under the tree until he goes to bed, makes it more fun in the morning."

"Like Santa came."

"Exactly." Kaiba said as he and Yugi both tried to let the other go into the kitchen.

"Ugh, we should really get this walkway enlarged," said Kaiba. Yugi wasn't looking at him. "Of course, it's never been a problem before, I never have anyone o…ver." Kaiba realized what Yugi had been looking at. It was that stupid mistletoe.

"I… sorry I just noticed," said Yugi.

"Yeah… No body's around, so it's not like we…"

"Well, yeah, of course. Although it _is _a tradition," Yugi said with a slight grin.

There was no question that Yugi was joking, completely and totally facetious, but Kaiba still replied, "It is," and leaned down over Yugi. He swiftly kissed him, so short and uneventful, Kaiba could compare it to kissing Mokuba on rare occasion.

Kaiba proceeded to walk into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove, and Yugi just watched, smiling.


End file.
